Coroner's Journal: Forensics and the Art of Stalking Death

by Louis Cataldie

  One of the things that hit me the hardest at this particular crime scene was the murder victim’s son. He looked to be about the same age as my youngest son. He seemed so small sitting there in the huge, light-brown Ford pickup, which was one of those dual cab types with a long wheelbase. He was sitting there, staring straight ahead through the windshield, eyes focused on nothing in particular. I guess he was just trying to avert his gaze from the horror in the parking lot to his right. The truck was barred from entering the lot by a ribbon of yellow crime-scene tape that sputtered as it resisted the incoming cool front.

  I surmised that he knew this parking lot well. His mother worked here at the Beauty Depot, and this lot served her customers. If he’s anything like my youngest, Michael, he’d found occasion to roam about the lot, perhaps when he came to meet his mom after work on their way to eat out. Maybe he had even ridden his bike or skateboard up the ramp there, or over those bumps. And now his mom was there under the tarp and she wasn’t coming home. Maybe I project too much. The wind kept trying to blow the blue blanket up, but a man in a dark shirt quickly put his foot on the edge of the blanket to keep it down—shielding what was beneath. The child’s only hope was to look straight ahead.

  There is no way to make any sense out of such malicious violence. I feel utterly powerless. I was shaken back to the reason I was here by one of the uniforms. He tapped me on the shoulder as I had not responded to his initial request. “Hey, Doc, the PIO wants you to talk to the husband of the deceased.” The uniform spoke quietly and motioned to where the public information officer anxiously awaited my presence.

  The streets can be very unforgiving. My assessment of this situation started as soon as I began to walk over to Mr. Ballenger and the public information officer, Corporal Don Kelly. They were only about fifteen yards away but the distance seemed like miles. A deluge of questions flooded my brain: What is there to say? How much is he ready to hear? How much does he want to hear? How much can I tell him?

  I know words cannot even approach an understanding of the magnitude and depth of their loss. Death is a very personal thing, and so is grief. Maybe as a doctor I want to take away the pain. Seems grandiose, doesn’t it? Maybe being part of the judicial branch, I feel some guilt that this happened. Maybe it makes me feel vulnerable myself, and for my family, and I know words cannot ease a loss. So why say them? Because that’s all I have to offer at the time!

  I’ve seen the full gamut of responses from family members. Some are just numb, or in shock. They simply cannot process the horror. I’ve also been physically attacked during a notification—a case of what we call displaced rage. When I was an ER doc back at the General in 1977, an elderly black female died of congestive heart failure. I had the whole family (wrong) assembled in a small office (wrong). I went in and closed the door behind me (wrong). Then I tried to break the news. There must have been twenty people packed into that room—we’re talking very close quarters—all sitting and standing, like they were in bleachers and I was the main attraction. So I have my back to the closed door that opens inward (wrong) and I say something like “She did not make it . . .” (no response) “. . . we tried our best but her heart just gave out . . .” (no response) . . .

  Then a matriarch sitting directly in front of me asked, “You mean she’s dead?” I said, “Yes, she is dead.” The matriarch shrieked and threw an umbrella at me—point first. I dodged the projectile and it bounced off the door next to my head. I noticed as I made my escape that it left a dent in the door. It was a lesson I never forgot and one that was always in the forefront of my mind at times like this.

  The PIO introduced me to Mr. Ballenger. I shook his hand. His eyes told me all I needed to know. He was in profound distress but he was doing what he needed to do. We respect that out here.

  I remember putting my hand on his shoulder. It’s about empathy, I guess.

  When his eyes met mine I saw that questioning pain I have seen too often. Any fears I may have had about a violent response on his part were dismissed.

  “I am so sorry for your loss.” The words are so inadequate. “How can I help?”

  He wanted to know how she had died.

  That old pearl of wisdom guided me again—Truth without compassion is brutality. It’s more than a pearl, it is an extrapolation right out of the Hippocratic Oath (“First, do no harm . . .”).

  I have learned that it is usually better to say things straight out and be supportive. It was apparent that he wanted and needed to hear the facts. So I told him.

  “Your wife sustained a single gunshot wound to her head, and she died from that injury. There is no other sign of trauma or assault.” There is no easy way to say these things.

  He nodded in the affirmative. When a person really loves another, there is always one question that they ask right away. “Did she suffer?”

  “No sir, she died instantaneously. I doubt she even knew what happened.”

  There was no need to go into how I deduced that information.

  Truth without compassion is brutality.

  “Thank God for that!” he responded, and I knew he meant it.

  He turned to his son, who was still staring straight ahead. People came to help—the family minister and some other folks—and after a brief exchange, the child, who remained virtually motionless, was taken away. I felt some relief that he was gone from this nightmare, yet I knew this night would never end for him. Mr. Ballenger told me that family friends and the minister would look after his children.

  There are times when people just need permission or guidance from someone in authority to be able to do the right thing for themselves and their family members. Nobody is ever prepared for something like this. They don’t really know what to do or what is going to happen. I informed him that we would be doing an autopsy and that the funeral home of his choice should contact us concerning the release of his wife’s body.

  Even as I was saying this, I was not sure how much he was absorbing. The only thing that I really knew was that the look on that child’s face would intrude on my own daily thoughts for many years.

  The homicide detectives were late in arriving and did not make the scene until an hour or so after the call-in. That’s a long time to wait around and leave someone’s body under a tarp. It’s an uncomfortable situation, with the potential to magnify the trauma for the family. It also gives the crowd more time to gather, and that can mean trouble of another sort. Old enemies come down from the northern part of the neighborhood and run into one another. And they may have scores to settle. We don’t need stray bullets and another crime scene. The detectives were probably involved in the search for the serial killer—especially since this was the one-year anniversary of the first known victim’s death. But people expect a rapid response, and they were not getting it.

  I hate having to leave the victim’s body out in a parking lot, but I absolutely understand that the detectives need to see the undisturbed scene. So we waited and it seemed like an eternity. While we waited, Adam and I discussed options and possibilities. Adam was a young, enthusiastic crime-scene technical officer and had just returned from an investigator school on crime-scene reconstruction. He’s a damn good investigator and we had grown to respect each other and worked together well on death-scene investigations. We knew that the FBI still had its bloodhounds in town for the serial-killer search and wondered if the dogs could be of service here.

  The detectives finally arrived and I was able to get back to the awful task at hand. The bullet appeared to have entered the victim’s left lateral upper neck area and exited through the mouth. Her lower jaw was pulverized, and teeth were scattered about the pavement. The bullet then slammed into the driver’s-side mirror of the SUV and lodged there.

  She was so small—maybe 110 pounds—and there were several pints of blood on the ground. I surmised that she was hit at the upper cervical spine, probably suffered instant paralysis, and bled to death. Her purse was missing and there were no empty shell casings a
bout—shot with a powerful revolver, was my guess. (I was wrong.) Her keys were still in her right hand and there was no sign of any effort to break her fall by putting her hands up.

  These are challenging times for me. The need to be professional, while the reality of the damage that has been done to this family and child as well as his siblings make it difficult. But the job has to be done right if we’re going to get the guy who did this heinous thing.

  I examined the spray of Hong’s blood and tissue that had been blown onto the vehicle. The fine mist of particles indicated a high-velocity projectile—I was still banking on a .357 as the murder weapon.

  As I examined Mrs. Ballenger, I inquired if she had been moved at all. No one had an answer to my question.

  It’s an important question. In the event emergency first responders moved Mrs. Ballenger’s body, we needed to know the position she was in prior to that movement. If the blood splatter doesn’t fit the way her body is positioned, somebody moved her. If the perpetrator moved her, then we have a greater chance of finding trace evidence from the killer—trace evidence he left behind that will link him to the scene and help convict him.

  So I decided to go to the source. “Adam, do me a favor and radio EMS to see if they moved her.” He was already on it. They had not moved her to any extent other than to verify she was dead. That was good news. I depend on EMS to stand for Emergency Medical Service, not Evidence Meddling Service. I must admit, though that the EMS guys in East Baton Rouge Parish are pretty good about not disturbing evidence—most of the time, anyway.

  A visual replay of how the injury must have occurred played through the right side of my brain while the analytical functions of my left brain processed the information. The bullet smashes into her neck, shattering vertebrae; then fragments of bone and the bullet itself sever her spinal cord and various blood vessels in the area. Then it exits through her face. She never had a chance. She was minding her own business, perhaps thinking about the best route to get home to her family—then a split second of shock and it’s over. Over forever. No time to prepare, no time to say good-bye, no time to defend herself from the cowardly bastard who did this.

  As I have mentioned, this woman’s murder occurred during the hunt for the Baton Rouge serial killer. As part of the efforts of that task force, the FBI had brought in three scent-tracking bloodhounds to the city to search for serial-killer evidence. I did not understand all the intricacies of bringing them in and they seemed to be of little use as far as getting the serial-killer mystery solved. But no expense was spared. However, this seemed like a lucky coincidence, and the BRPD requested that one of the dogs be dispatched to the Beauty Depot to pick up the trail of Mrs. Ballenger’s killer.

  The dog was offered a bullet fragment that had gone through Mrs. Ballenger’s neck and face, then given a chance to smell her body through the body bag. The dog then smelled everyone in the area and charged off in the direction in which the killer had reportedly fled, a group of officers and dog handlers trotting off after the animal. I had my doubts that the bullet fragment would offer a scent. The idea that a bullet that passed through a human and lodged in a car could have the scent of the person who put the cartridge into the gun seems like a helluva reach. But I’m no dog expert.

  Incidentally, the dog did not find the murderer. I’m not sure who, if anybody, they found at the end of the scent trail but I’ll bet he was surprised.

  A month later, first-degree murder warrants were issued for John Allen Muhammad, age forty-one, and Lee Boyd Malvo (alias John Lee Malvo), his seventeen-year-old companion, infamous now for their killing spree that spanned five states.

  Mrs. Ballenger happened to be one of their first victims. On the lam, they faced multiple state and federal counts in Alabama and Louisiana, as well as charges in the sniper spree that left ten people dead and three others wounded in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.

  Muhammad and Malvo were finally arrested in connection with the Beltway sniper attacks early on the morning of October 24, 2002, at a Maryland rest stop where they were sleeping in their faded-blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice.

  Hidden in the Caprice was the Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle, which would be positively linked to the Ballenger killing by ballistics comparisons. It was the same weapon used in eight of the ten D.C.-area sniper killings.

  Receipts found in the suspects’ Caprice also put them in Baton Rouge on September 23—the day Hong Im Ballenger was killed. Muhammad was a local boy; he grew up in Baton Rouge. Family members said that he had recently passed through town with Malvo. While they were here, they reportedly went to the YMCA to exercise—the same Y where my wife and I work out. Who knows, they could have been in there at the same time we were. Think about that for a moment. You never know how close you may be to such incarnations of evil. Oftentimes they simply blend in.

  Justice was finally served. The ultimate plan of the two killers was to extort $10 million from the government in exchange for an end to the shootings. Muhammad’s trial began in October 2003, and the following month he was found guilty. Four months later he was sentenced to Virginia’s death row, where he sits now, awaiting execution. A jury convicted Malvo of capital murder on December 18, 2003; he received a sentence of life imprisonment. He received a second life term in October of 2004.

  Hong’s husband is more forgiving than I could ever be. He obviously has a strong anchor in his faith. Mr. Ballenger has been quoted as saying he wanted the killers to get life in prison—that way they will have a chance to repent and go to heaven.

  Hong’s sister is not so forgiving. As far as she is concerned, sparing the lives of such malicious men only gives them the chance to kill somebody else while in jail. That somebody could be a guard.

  I’m of the same ilk. I still see the look on that child’s face in my dreams. I see me talking to his dad, and the young boy staring straight ahead, not wanting to know what I was saying and not wanting to look into the parking lot. I wonder how that child is doing tonight without his mom. I wonder about the afterlife. I wonder if Hong is looking over him right now. I wonder about what all this means, and I wish for the death of the perpetrators.

  I have anger, pain, and outrage. Our only solace is in the fact that the two despicable perpetrators have been caught and will ultimately face justice. The district attorney here in East Baton Rouge Parish is waiting for our turn to try Malvo and Muhammad. If you murder someone here, you don’t just walk or run away, as the case may be. That dog just don’t hunt.

  THIRTEEN

  A Killer Strikes Again

  TRINEISHA DENÉ COLOMB

  And so in the midst of the Baton Rouge Serial Killer ordeal, Malvo and Muhammad were captured and those two serial killers were off the streets. But the man who was credited with the murders of Gina, Murray, and Pam was still active. Evidently the Baton Rouge heat was getting to him, as he struck next near Lafayette, Louisiana, a town about fifty miles west of Baton Rouge, along Interstate 10. The drive time between the cities is an hour or less. This time he killed an attractive and successful twenty-three-year-old black female, Trineisha Dené Colomb (known to family and friends as Dené). She had been in the army for two years, loved her country, and had plans to become a Marine.

  Dené became a missing person when she disappeared on November 21, 2002. A local resident noticed her car parked on Robbie Road that same day but did not think much of it at the time. When it was still there the next day he reported it to the police. Her black 1994 Mazda MX3 had the keys in the ignition. Her coin purse and license were also found inside the vehicle. A search of the area ensued but was not fruitful. She was still a missing person. Her family guessed that she must have been in the area to visit the grave of her mother, Verna, who had died of cancer seven months earlier. Dené visited her mother’s gravesite frequently.

  Two days later, she was no longer a missing person, she was a murder victim. A rabbit hunter discovered the nude remains of Ms. Colomb several hundred yards off the roadside in
a wooded area in St. Landry Parish twenty miles from where her car had been discovered. An autopsy revealed that she had been bludgeoned to death and died from blunt trauma to the head. I’ve met some of her family members at memorial rallies, and it was most apparent that they were not going to let this just go away. But due to jurisdictional boundaries, I was not officially involved in her case.

  Two weeks after Dené’s body was discovered, a caller came forward with news that a white pickup truck had been seen parked behind her car on the day she disappeared. The occupant was a white male thirty to forty years old and had an “intense and intimidating stare.” A sketch of the man from the white truck was widely circulated by the task force. He was a “person of interest” and not a suspect per se. A new amended profile was developed and released to the public. This “person of interest” reinforced the “white male in a white truck” image of the killer.

  One month after her death, DNA evidence would indicate that Dené was killed by the same man who killed Gina Wilson Green, Charlotte Murray Pace, and Pam Kinamore. On December 24, 2002, the Baton Rouge Advocate ran the headline: BR KILLER STRIKES IN LAFAYETTE. The mythical “racial barrier” that serial killers are not supposed to cross had been broken.

  This abduction was also a deviation of the killer’s mode of operation. To date, he was tagged as liking home abductions. What was he doing in a graveyard? Yet, there had been another attack in another cemetery some years earlier. In April of 1993, Michele Chapman was fifteen years old when she and a friend were attacked in a Zachary cemetery. Zachary is a small town of about 12,000 residents and is located in the northern part of East Baton Rouge Parish.